Linguistics : upso/browse
Cognition and Communication in the Evolution of Language//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198747314.001.0001/acprof-9780198747314
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780198747314.jpg" alt="Cognition and Communication in the Evolution of Language"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Anne Reboul</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780198747314</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198747314.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2017</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2017-03-23</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>The book offers a new approach to the evolution of language, arguing for a two-step process, syntax first evolving as an auto-organizational process for the human conceptual apparatus (as a Language of Thought), and this language of thought being then externalized for communication, due to social selection pressures. The book first argues that, despite the routine use of language in communication, current use is not a failsafe guide to adaptive history. It points out the many difficulties of accounts that see language as having evolved for communication: its uniqueness among animal communication systems and its structural properties, notably decoupling that makes a tool for deception in contradiction with all views on the evolution of communication, making it unlikely that it specifically evolved for communication. It highlights the specificity of human cognition relative to animal communication and notably the specific richness of the human conceptual apparatus. It proposes that syntax (on a minimalist view, Merge) evolved owing to a self-organizational process of the human conceptual apparatus. The last step, the externalization of language for communication, was due to the political organization of human hunter-gatherer groups, along the lines of the Argumentative Theory of Reasoning. The evolutionary processes involved are heterogeneous in keeping with the contemporary Extended Synthesis.</p>Anne Reboul2017-03-23Distributed Reduplication//mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262013260.001.0001/upso-9780262013260
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780262013260.jpg" alt="Distributed Reduplication"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>John Frampton</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780262013260</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>The MIT Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.7551/mitpress/9780262013260.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2009</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2013-08-22</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>A convincing account of reduplicative phenomena has been a longstanding problem for rule-based theories of morphophonology. Many scholars believe that derivational phonology is incapable in principle of analyzing reduplication. The author of this book demonstrates the adequacy of rule-based theories by providing a general account within that framework and illustrating his proposal with extensive examples of widely varying reduplication schemes from many languages. His analysis is based on new proposals about the structure of autosegmental representations. Although the author offers many new ideas about the computations that are put to use in reduplicative phonology, some fairly radical, his intent is conservative: to provide evidence that the model of the phonological computation developed by Chomsky and Halle in 1968 is fundamentally correct—that surface forms are produced by the successive modification of underlying forms. His theory accounts for the surface properties of reduplicative morphemes by operations that are distributed at various points in the morphophonology rather than by a single operation applied at a single point. Lexical insertion, prosodic adjustment, and copying can each make a contribution to the output at different points in the computation of surface form. The author discusses particular reduplicative processes in many languages as he develops his general theory. The final chapter provides an extensive sequence of detailed case studies. Appendixes offer additional material on the No Crossing Constraint, the autosegmental structure of reduplicative representations, linearization, and concatenative versus nonconcatenative morphology.</p>John Frampton2013-08-22Events and Semantic Architecture//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244300.001.0001/acprof-9780199244300
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780199244300.jpg" alt="Events and Semantic Architecture"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Paul M. Pietroski</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780199244300</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244300.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2004</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2007-09-01</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This book articulates and defends a simple conception of semantic composition: when two meaningful expressions are concatenated, the result is understood as a conjunction of monadic predicates; in human languages, concatenation always signifies predicate conjunction. From this ‘Conjunctivist’ perspective, simple cases of adjunction (like ‘black cat’) are paradigms, and neo-Davidsonian event analyzes rightly associate certain grammatical relations with thematic roles. The sentence ‘Fido chased Garfield yesterday’ means, roughly, that something satisfies four conditions: its Agent was Fido, it was a chase, its Theme was Garfield, and it occurred yesterday. Such analyses, involving existential closure of a covert variable, are easily extended to examples involving negation and sentential connectives. This book contains four chapters. Chapter 1 compares elementary Conjunctivist proposals with ‘Functionist’ accounts according to which (i) predicate-argument concatenation signifies function-application, and (ii) adjuncts are accommodated by appeal to type-shifting or function-conjunction. Chapter 2 provides a Conjunctivist account of quantificational constructions, like ‘chased every cat’, in terms of a metalanguage with plural variables. This account is extended to plural noun phrases, as in ‘Three dogs chased the cats’; and this suggests a treatment of apparently nonconjunctive phrases like ‘big ants’. The resulting proposals — which explain the conservativity of determiners, and handle collective readings without quantifying over collections — are better than Functionist alternatives. Chapter 3 shows that Conjunctivism is superior to Functionism with regards to causative constructions, serial verbs, and many verbs that combine with complementizer phrases. Chapter 4 is a summary of conclusions, and discusses some difficulties facing all extant accounts of meaning.</p>Paul M. Pietroski2007-09-01The Language of Fraud Cases//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190270643.001.0001/acprof-9780190270643
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780190270643.jpg" alt="The Language of Fraud Cases"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Roger W. Shuy</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780190270643</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190270643.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2016</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2015-12-17</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>In a number of criminal law cases, defendants are accused of using language to defraud. The evidence often provides analyzable language that provides clues to the ways that the alleged fraud took place, but in some cases linguistic analysis can show some or all of the accusations to be unjustified. This book describes eight types of fraud cases growing out of the complex laws regulating commercial businesses and individuals in which defendants were accused of fraudulently failing to follow federal requirements relating to carrying out government contracts, resource conservation, corrupt foreign business practice, buying or selling trade secrets, money laundering, securities sales, price-fixing, and insurance contracts. The book includes chapters illustrating each of these types of alleged fraud and describes how linguistic analysis was used to help determine whether fraudulent language existed and how the government investigators believed the fraud was accomplished. Prosecutions in these eight cases were based on the defendants’ alleged intentional, knowing, and willful uses of fraudulent language to achieve financial gain. Linguistic analysis helped defense lawyers achieve favorable results in three cases and partially successful results in three others. The analysis did what it could in the other two cases, but could only go as far as the language evidence permitted. The analytical methodology used is described in detail for each case, beginning with the need to identify the participants’ speech events, schemas, agendas, speech acts, and conversational strategies, all of which contextualized what the government believed to be the smoking gun evidence of fraud.</p>Roger W. Shuy2015-12-17From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198792581.001.0001/oso-9780198792581
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780198792581.jpg" alt="From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Don Ringe</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780198792581</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Language Families</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/oso/9780198792581.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2017</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2017-08-24</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This book describes the earliest reconstructable stages of the prehistory of English, focusing specifically on linguistic structure. It outlines the grammar of Proto-Indo-European, considers the changes by which one dialect of that prehistoric language developed into Proto-Germanic, and provides a detailed account of the grammar of Proto-Germanic. In the course of his exposition Don Ringe draws on a long tradition of work on many languages, including Hittite, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Slavic, Gothic, and Old Norse. This second edition has been significantly revised to provide a more in-depth account of Proto-Indo-European, with further exploration of disputed points; it has also been updated to include new developments in the field, particularly in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European verb and nominal inflection. The author also reconsiders some of his original approaches to specific linguistic changes and their relative chronology based on his recent research.</p>Don Ringe2017-08-24Creating Language Crimes//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195181661.001.0001/acprof-9780195181661
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780195181661.jpg" alt="Creating Language CrimesHow Law Enforcement Uses (and Misuses) Language"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Roger W. Shuy</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780195181661</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195181661.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2005</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2007-09-01</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This book describes and illustrates eleven powerful conversational strategies used by undercover police officers and cooperating witnesses who secretly tape-record targets in criminal investigations. Twelve actual criminal case studies are used as examples. These strategies creating illusion of guilt include the apparently deliberate use of semantic ambiguity, blocking the targets’ words (by creating static on the tape, interrupting them, speaking on their behalf, and manipulating the off/on switch); rapidly changing the subject before targets can respond (the “hit and run” strategy); contaminating the tape with irrelevant information that can make targets appear to be guilty; camouflaging illegality by making actions appear to be legal; isolating targets from important information that they need in order to make informed choices; inaccurately restating things the target has said; withholding crucial information from targets; lying to targets about critical information; and scripting targets in what to say on tape. These conversational strategies gain power from the fact that the targets do not know that they are being recorded, and often let things go right by them during the discourse. Nor do they know that the real audience of the conversations consists of later jury listeners, who do not know the full context of these conversations. Unlike everyday, unrecorded conversation, the most critical listening takes place at a future time and under very different circumstances. It is shown that undercover officers and their cooperating witnesses make use of essentially the same conversational strategies.</p>Roger W. Shuy2007-09-01Modality Across Syntactic Categories//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718208.001.0001/acprof-9780198718208
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780198718208.jpg" alt="Modality Across Syntactic Categories"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>AnaArreguiAna ArreguiAssociate Professor of Linguistics, University of OttawaMaría LuisaRiveroMaría Luisa RiveroEmeritus Professor of Linguistics, University of OttawaAndrésSalanovaAndrés SalanovaAssociate Professor of Linguistics, University of Ottawa</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780198718208</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Syntax and Morphology</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718208.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2017</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2017-04-20</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This volume explores the extremely rich diversity found under the “modal umbrella” in natural language. Offering a cross-linguistic perspective on the encoding of modal meanings that draws on novel data from an extensive set of languages, the book supports a view according to which modality infuses a much more extensive number of syntactic categories and levels of syntactic structure than has traditionally been thought. The volume distinguishes between “low modality,” which concerns modal interpretations that associate with the verbal and nominal cartographies in syntax, “middle modality” or modal interpretation associated to the syntactic cartography internal to the clause, and “high modality” that relates to the cartography known as the left periphery. By offering enticing combinations of cross-linguistic discussions of the more studied sources of modality together with novel or unexpected sources of modality, the volume presents specific case studies that show how meanings associated with low, middle, and high modality crystallize across a large variety of languages. The chapters on low modality explore modal meanings in structures that lack the complexity of full clauses, including conditional readings in noun phrases and modal features in lexical verbs. The chapters on middle modality examine the effects of tense and aspect on constructions with counterfactual readings, and on those that contain canonical modal verbs. The chapters on high modality are dedicated to constructions with imperative, evidential, and epistemic readings, examining, and at times challenging, traditional perspectives that syntactically associate these interpretations with the left periphery of the clause.</p>Ana Arregui, María Luisa Rivero, and Andrés Salanova2017-04-20Vowel Prosthesis in Romance//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541157.001.0001/acprof-9780199541157
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780199541157.jpg" alt="Vowel Prosthesis in RomanceA Diachronic Study"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Rodney Sampson</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780199541157</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Phonetics / Phonology</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541157.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2009</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2010-02-01</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This book presents for the first time an in‐depth historical account of vowel prosthesis in the Romance languages. Vowel prosthesis is a change which involves the appearance of a non‐etymological vowel at the beginning of a word: a familiar example is the initial e which appears in the development of Latin sperare to Spanish esperar and French espérer ‘to hope’. Despite its widespread incidence in the Romance languages, it has remained poorly studied. In his wide‐ranging comparative coverage, Professor Sampson identifies three main categories of vowel prosthesis that have occurred and explores in detail their historical trajectory and the relationship between them. The presentation draws freely throughout on the rich philological materials available from Romance and brings to light various unexpected changes in the productive use of prosthesis through time. For example in French and Italian (which is Tuscan‐based), one category of prosthesis became well established in the early Middle Ages only to lose productivity and subsequently become moribund. With its extensive use of empirical data and findings from theoretical linguistics, the book offers a thorough and revealing account of a fascinating chapter in the phonological history of Romance.</p>Rodney Sampson2010-02-01Graded Modality//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198701347.001.0001/oso-9780198701347
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780198701347.jpg" alt="Graded ModalityQualitative and Quantitative Perspectives"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Daniel Lassiter</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780198701347</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Computational Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/oso/9780198701347.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2017</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2017-06-22</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This book explores graded expressions of modality, a rich and underexplored source of insight into modal semantics. Studies on modal language to date have largely focussed on a small and non-representative subset of expressions, namely modal auxiliaries such as must, might, and ought. Here, Daniel Lassiter argues that we should expand the conversation to include gradable modals such as more likely than, quite possible, and very good. He provides an introduction to qualitative and degree semantics for graded meaning, using the Representational Theory of Measurement to expose the complementarity between these apparently opposed perspectives on gradation. The volume explores and expands the typology of scales among English adjectives and uses the result to shed light on the meanings of a variety of epistemic and deontic modals. It also demonstrates that modality is deeply intertwined with probability and expected value, connecting modal semantics with the cognitive science of uncertainty and choice.</p>Daniel Lassiter2017-06-22The Syntax of Old Norse//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199235599.001.0001/acprof-9780199235599
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780199235599.jpg" alt="The Syntax of Old NorseWith a survey of the inflectional morphology and a complete bibliography"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Jan Terje Faarlund</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780199235599</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199235599.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2007</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2010-01-01</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This is the first account of Old Norse syntax for a hundred years, and the first ever in a non-Scandinavian language. It presents a full analysis of the syntax of the language, and succinct descriptions of its phonology and inflectional morphology. Old Norse is the language used from the early ninth century till the late fourteenth century in Norway, Iceland, and the Faroes, and in the Norse settlements in the British Isles and Greenland. It was the language of the Vikings and of the Old Icelandic sagas, and it is the best-documented medieval Germanic language. The syntactic analyses in the book are supported by numerous prose examples taken from the most reliable Norwegian and Icelandic manuscript editions. The descriptive framework is generative grammar, but the description is informal enough to be understandable to any linguist, grammarian or philologist regardless of theoretical background.</p>Jan Terje Faarlund2010-01-01English as a Lingua Franca in Asean//hongkong.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5790/hongkong/9789888028795.001.0001/upso-9789888028795
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9789888028795.jpg" alt="English as a Lingua Franca in AseanA Multilingual Model"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Andy Kirkpatrick</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9789888028795</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Hong Kong University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.5790/hongkong/9789888028795.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2010</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2011-09-14</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>The lingua franca role of English, coupled with its status as the official language of ASEAN, has important implications for language policy and language education. These include the relationship between English, the respective national languages of ASEAN, and thousands of local languages. How can the demand for English be balanced against the need for people to acquire their national language and mother tongue? While many will also need a regional lingua franca, they are learning English as the first foreign language from primary school in all ASEAN countries. Might not this early introduction of English threaten local languages and children's ability to learn? Or can English be introduced and taught in such a way that it can complement local languages rather than replace them? The aim of this book is to explore questions such as these and then make recommendations on language policy and language education for regional policymakers.</p>Andy Kirkpatrick2011-09-14Representing Direction in Language and Space//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199260195.001.0001/acprof-9780199260195
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780199260195.jpg" alt="Representing Direction in Language and Space"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Emilevan der ZeeEmile van der ZeeUniversity of LincolnJonSlackJon SlackUniversity of Lincolnhttp://auth.lincoln.ac.uk/psychology/staff/529.asp</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780199260195</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199260195.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2003</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2010-01-01</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This book considers how it is possible for people to use directions like above the table or over the city. How does our brain or any other information processing system represent a direction as a spatial entity? And how is it possible to link such a representation to language, so that we talk about a direction we have in mind? When we look at or imagine a scene, what entities can be employed for representing a direction, and what are the parts in language that can be used to talk about directions? This book brings together research from linguistics, psychology, philosophy, computer science, anthropology, and neuroscience to answer these intriguing questions. By considering direction representation across different languages and in different information processing systems, this book gives an overview of the main issues in this area.</p>Emile van der Zee and Jon Slack2010-01-01Locality in Vowel Harmony//mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262140973.001.0001/upso-9780262140973
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780262140973.jpg" alt="Locality in Vowel Harmony"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Andrew Nevins</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780262140973</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>The MIT Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Lexicography</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.7551/mitpress/9780262140973.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2010</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2013-08-22</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>Vowel harmony results from a set of restrictions that determine the possible and impossible sequences of vowels within a word. The study of syntax begins with the observation that the words of a sentence cannot go in just any order, and the study of phonology begins with the same observation for the consonants and vowels of a word. This book investigates long-distance relations between vowels in vowel harmony systems across a range of languages, with the aim of demonstrating that the locality conditions which regulate these relations can be attributed to the same principle that regulates long-distance syntactic dependencies. It argues that vowel harmony represents a manifestation of the Agree algorithm for feature-valuation (formulated by Noam Chomsky in 2000), as part of an overarching effort to show that phonology can be described in terms of the principles of the Minimalist Program. The book demonstrates that the principle of target-driven search, the phenomenon of defective intervention, and the principles regulating the size of the domain over which dependencies are computed apply to both phonological and syntactic phenomena. It offers phonologists new evidence that viewing vowel harmony through the lens of relativized minimality has the potential to unify different levels of linguistic representation and different domains of empirical inquiry in a unified framework. Moreover, the book’s specific implementation of the locality of dependencies represents a major advance in understanding constraints on possible harmonic languages.</p>Andrew Nevins2013-08-22Creating Language//mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262034319.001.0001/upso-9780262034319
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780262034319.jpg" alt="Creating LanguageIntegrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Morten H. Christiansen, Nick ChaterPeter W.CulicoverPeter W. Culicover</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780262034319</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>The MIT Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.7551/mitpress/9780262034319.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2016</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2017-01-19</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>Language is a hallmark of the human species; the flexibility and unbounded expressivity of our linguistic abilities is unique in the biological world. In this book, Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater argue that to understand this astonishing phenomenon, we must consider how language is created: moment by moment, in the generation and understanding of individual utterances; year by year, as new language learners acquire language skills; and generation by generation, as languages change, split, and fuse through processes of cultural evolution. Christiansen and Chater propose a revolutionary new framework for understanding the evolution, acquisition, and processing of language, offering an integrated theory of how language creation is intertwined across these multiple timescales.
Christiansen and Chater argue that mainstream generative approaches to language do not provide compelling accounts of language evolution, acquisition, and processing. Their own account draws on important developments from across the language sciences, including statistical natural language processing, learnability theory, computational modeling, and psycholinguistic experiments with children and adults. Christiansen and Chater also consider some of the major implications of their theoretical approach for our understanding of how language works, offering alternative accounts of specific aspects of language, including the structure of the vocabulary, the importance of experience in language processing, and the nature of recursive linguistic structure.</p>Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater2017-01-19The Clause-Typing System of Plains Cree//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654536.001.0001/acprof-9780199654536
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780199654536.jpg" alt="The Clause-Typing System of Plains CreeIndexicality, Anaphoricity, and Contrast"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Clare Cook</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780199654536</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology, Semantics and Pragmatics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654536.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2014</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2014-04-16</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>Plains Cree, an Algonquian language of western Canada, has two entirely distinct verbal inflectional paradigms: independent and conjunct. This book provides the first systematic investigation comparing these two verb types. It argues that the independent order denotes an indexical clause type with familiar deictic properties, while the conjunct order is an anaphoric clause type whose reference is determined by rules of anaphoric dependence. On the syntactic side, indexical clauses are shown to be restricted to a subset of matrix environments, and to exclude proforms that have clause‐external antecedents or induce cross‐clausal dependencies. Anaphoric clauses have an elsewhere distribution: they occur in both matrix and dependent contexts, and freely host and participate in cross‐clausal dependencies. The semantic discussion focusses primarily on the context in which a proposition is evaluated: it shows that indexical clauses have absolute tense and a speaker origo, consistent with deixis on a speech act. Anaphoric clauses, by contrast, use anaphoric dependencies to establish the evaluation context. Along the way, Plains Cree data is compared to English's matrix/subordinate system, to Amele's clause‐chaining system, and to Romance subjunctive clauses. In addition, a first micro‐typology of pronominal marking and initial change in Algonquian languages is provided.</p>Clare Cook2014-04-16Negation in Gapping//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199543601.001.0001/acprof-9780199543601
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780199543601.jpg" alt="Negation in Gapping"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Sophie Repp</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780199543601</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology, Theoretical Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199543601.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2009</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2009-05-01</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This study investigates the behaviour of the negation in the ellipsis type of gapping and shows that gapping sentences with a negation in the first conjunct but not in the second can receive one of the following readings: (¬A&amp;¬B), (¬A&amp;B), (¬(A&amp;B)). Which reading arises depends on phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors. The book proposes a syntactic copying analysis of gapping, which, combined with semantic‐pragmatic criteria such as balanced contrast between the conjuncts, accounts for the various readings. A thorough investigation of different subtypes of negation – predicate‐propositional‐illocutionary – further determines the structure of the resulting gapping structure.</p>Sophie Repp2009-05-01Deconstructing Ergativity//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190256586.001.0001/acprof-9780190256586
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780190256586.jpg" alt="Deconstructing ErgativityTwo Types of Ergative Languages and Their Features"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Maria Polinsky</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780190256586</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology, Theoretical Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190256586.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2016</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2016-05-19</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>The main purpose of the book is to advance an analysis of case and argument structure that can help to explain variation in the syntactic behavior of external arguments across languages. The focus is on properties of ergative case-marked arguments, and the book proposes an analysis of ergative arguments as prepositional phrases in some languages (but not in others), to explain variations in syntactic properties first in ergative case marking languages as compared to non-ergative ones, and second, between PP-ergative languages as compared to DP-ergative languages. The book also covers a range of other topics within ergativity, and it touches on quite a large range of languages including, Chukchi, Georgian, Salish languages, Mayan languages, Polynesian languages, Avar, and Tsez.</p>Maria Polinsky2016-05-19The Structure of Words at the Interfaces//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198778264.001.0001/oso-9780198778264
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780198778264.jpg" alt="The Structure of Words at the Interfaces"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>HeatherNewellHeather NewellAssistant Professor, Linguistics Dept, Université du Québec à MontréalMáireNoonanMáire NoonanCourse Lecturer and Research Assistant, Department of Linguistics, McGill UniversityGlynePiggottGlyne PiggottEmeritus Professor, Department of Linguistics, McGill UniversityLisa deMenaTravisLisa deMena TravisProfessor, Department of Linguistics, McGill University</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780198778264</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology, Theoretical Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/oso/9780198778264.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2017</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2017-06-22</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This volume contains chapters that treat the question ‘What is a word?’ in various ways. The lens through which this question is asked and answered is coloured by a discussion of where in the grammar wordhood is determined. All of the authors in this work take it as given that structures at, above, and below the ‘word’ are built in the same derivational system; there is no lexicalist grammatical subsystem dedicated to word building. This type of framework foregrounds the difficulty in defining wordhood. Questions like whether there are restrictions on the size of structures that distinguish words from phrases, or whether there are combinatory operations that are specific to one or the other, are central to the debate. The chapters herein do not all agree. Some propose wordhood to be limited to entities defined by syntactic heads, others propose that phrasal structure can be found within words. Some propose that head movement and adjunction (and Morphological Merger, as its mirror image) are the manner in which words are built, while others propose that phrasal movements are crucial to determining the order of morphemes word-internally. All chapters point to the conclusion that the phonological domains that we call words are read off of the morphosyntactic structure in particular ways. It is the study of this interface, between the syntactic and phonological modules of Universal Grammar, that underpins the totality of the discussion in this volume.</p>Heather Newell, Máire Noonan, Glyne Piggott, and Lisa deMena Travis2017-06-22The Phonetics and Phonology of Geminate Consonants//www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198754930.001.0001/oso-9780198754930
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780198754930.jpg" alt="The Phonetics and Phonology of Geminate Consonants"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>HaruoKubozonoHaruo KubozonoDirector, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780198754930</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>Oxford University Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Phonetics / Phonology, Theoretical Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.1093/oso/9780198754930.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2017</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2017-06-22</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>Geminate consonants, also known as long consonants, appear in many languages in the world, and how they contrast with their short counterparts, or singletons (e.g. /tt/ vs. /t/), is an important topic that features in most linguistics and phonology textbooks. However, neither their phonetic manifestation nor their phonological nature is fully understood, much less their cross-linguistic similarities and differences. As the first volume specifically devoted to the phonetics and phonology of geminate consonants, this book aims to bring together novel, original data and analyses concerning many individual languages in different parts of the world, to present a wide range of perspectives for the study of phonological contrasts in general by introducing various experimental (acoustic, perceptual, physiological, and electrophysiological) and non-experimental methodologies, and to discuss phonological contrasts in a wider context than is generally considered by looking also at the behaviour of geminate consonants in loanword phonology and language acquisition. Studying geminate consonants requires interdisciplinary approaches including experimental phonetics (acoustics and speech perception), theoretical phonology, speech processing, neurolinguistics, and language acquisition. Providing phonetic and phonological details about geminate consonants across languages will greatly contribute to research in these fields.</p>Haruo Kubozono2017-06-22Introducing Arguments//mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262162548.001.0001/upso-9780262162548
<table><tr><td width="200px"><img width="150px" src="/view/covers/9780262162548.jpg" alt="Introducing Arguments"/><br/></td><td><dl><dt>Author:</dt><dd>Liina Pylkkänen</dd><dt>ISBN:</dt><dd>9780262162548</dd><dt>Publisher:</dt><dd>The MIT Press</dd><dt>Subjects:</dt><dd>Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics</dd><dt>DOI:</dt><dd>10.7551/mitpress/9780262162548.001.0001</dd><dt>Published in print:</dt><dd>2008</dd><dt>Published Online:</dt><dd>2013-08-22</dd></dl></td></tr></table><p>This concise work offers a compositional theory of verbal argument structure in natural languages that focuses on how arguments which are not “core” arguments of the verb (arguments that are not introduced by verbal roots themselves) are introduced into argument structures. It shows that the type of argument structure variation which allows additional noncore arguments is a pervasive property of human language and that most languages have verbs which exhibit this behavior. It would be natural to hypothesize that the grammatical elements which allow for this variation are the same in different languages, but the author, citing the differences between the inventories of verbs that allow additional arguments in English and Venda, shows the difficulties in this assumption. Either the noncore arguments are introduced by different elements with different distributions, she argues, or the introducing elements are the same and some other factor is responsible for the distributional difference. Distinguishing between these two types of explanation and articulating the properties of argument-introducing elements is the essence of the author’s theory. Investigating the grammatical elements which allow the addition of noncore arguments, she argues that the introduction of additional arguments is largely carried by seven functional heads. Following Chomsky, the author claims that these belong to a universal inventory of functional elements from which a particular language must make its selection. Cross-linguistic variation, she argues, has two sources: Selection; and the way a language packages the selected elements into syntactic heads.</p>Liina Pylkkänen2013-08-22